Andrew Garfield’s medieval epic The Uprising is about two weeks from release, and its marketing is in the middle of an identity crisis. US promotions suddenly began selling it as a Robin Hood origin story, the UK distributor disowned the title within a day, and fans are left wondering what the film is actually about.
What the film was supposed to be
A historical epic about the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, written and directed by Paul Greengrass. Garfield plays an unnamed Ploughman, a fictional peasant who becomes a leader of the rebellion; Cosmo Jarvis plays Wat Tyler, the real revolt leader, and Jamie Bell plays the radical preacher John Ball. It opens in US cinemas on 11 September and in the UK on 4 October.
The sudden Robin Hood rebrand
This week, The Rise of Robin Hood suddenly appeared on US posters, showing Garfield as a masked, green-clad figure with a bow and arrow under the tagline “witness the rise of Robin Hood.” A day later the title was gone again.
A tale of two marketing campaigns
The UK distributor denied approving the material, insisting the film is about the Peasants’ Revolt and “not Robin Hood.” Yet Focus Features’ own US synopsis still says the uprising helped inspire the legend of Robin Hood, and production notes cite the 14th-century poem Piers Plowman, which contains the earliest surviving literary reference to Robin Hood.
The timing problem
There is one glaring snag: Robin Hood’s legend is set about two centuries before the 1381 revolt, under Richard the Lionheart and King John. “The Robin Hood legend had been around for about two centuries before the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt,” one observer noted. “He rose! 200 years before this!”
A film that keeps changing its name
This is not the first identity shift. The project was first reported in 2022 as The Hood with Benedict Cumberbatch tipped to star, then The Rage with Matthew McConaughey attached, before it became The Uprising with Garfield on board.
| Working title | Year | Star |
|---|---|---|
| The Hood | 2022 | Benedict Cumberbatch (tipped) |
| The Rage | Later | Matthew McConaughey (attached) |
| The Uprising | Now | Andrew Garfield |
Garfield is no stranger to a studio rebrand: he once spent a few years as The Amazing Spider-Man, a stretch of his career fans still debate, while the franchise’s latest chapter, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, just passed Titanic at the box office.
